The Dark Lord's Ashes
by drabbles
Summary: Lord Voldemort fell in love with a Muggle.


**Chapter One: Two Letters**

"Tom!" A ruler smacked down on my hand as the matron who supervised the children at my orphanage glared at me. "What are you going to say to Asha?"

I scuffed my shoe against the ground and stared at the floor. Then, I looked up, my dark eyes full of a hatred this matron could never understand. "Why should _I _say sorry to _her_?" I asked. I turned on my heel and left, barely seconds later, not deigning to meet the gaze of the little red-haired girl who was sitting on matron's green chair.

I could feel Asha's cold grey eyes upon me, though. She was my best friend at the orphanage, well, at least until yesterday night she had been. Yesterday night, I'd punched Asha in the face. You might want to know why I would do such a thing to my best friend...

Firstly, you have to know I had a valid reason. Asha was snooping around in my things. Looking at the only letter I'd received since I'd been living here at the orphanage.. The letter wasn't meant for Asha's eyes. It was meant for mine alone.

Why should _she _read a letter, offering _me _a position at a school where they taught the powerful secrets of magic? Asha already knew too much about my secrets. She'd seen me, one day, staring at rocks which were flying into the faces of the other children. She hadn't batted an eyelid when she asked me, "How do you do that?"

She'd been watching me since, every time I used my powers over the other children. I could mesmerise all of them with my powers and lead them, duped, to places they would find hard to escape. I tried to mesmerise Asha once – not that I was going to dump her somewhere faraway, she _was_ my best friend. It hadn't worked, though.

She'd laughed at me and snorted. "What are you trying to do, Tom?" she'd scoffed, "hypnotise me like you do to everyone else?"

I stuttered and stumbled, flushing red. I hardly ever blushed, but being caught out while trying to perform magic covertly was disturbing to say the least. How could Asha tell? "H-how, could you --?" my sentence trailed off into nothing.

She cast me a disdainful look. "Tom Riddle, it's easy as hell to tell when you're about to do magic. You get that crazy gleam in your eye and you squint a little. Like you need glasses. You look angry, when you do magic, Tom." She'd added the last sentence quietly and I was surprised by how much she had observed.

I flushed once more. It wasn't fair that Asha could read me like a book, and I couldn't read her at all. So, I started observing her closely. Noting down her every move in my mind. In four days, I learned that Cornflakes was her breakfast cereal of choice, that she hated the orphanage, and that she sang a lot. Asha's voice was pretty, too.

I was no closer to reading her then than I am now. Even though a year has passed since I decided I wanted to know Asha's every secret, I still can't read her like a book. Well, maybe I can. I can read her like a complex book of poetry that makes no sense. I've given up, now. It's not my fault I don't understand Asha, she simply doesn't make sense.

I returned to my room quietly, not wanting to disturb the other orphans. It was nine o'clock and most of the boys were already in bed, exhausted. We were worked hard at the orphanage. We did a few hours of basic schoolwork before we were assigned various tasks to do. The tasks were punishing, especially on the younger kids. Their six and seven year old bodies just couldn't stand the physical strain of some tasks.

When the children snored like old men, even I didn't have the heart to torture them. Though, truth be told, I was so tempted to sometimes. I had a lighter in my drawer and I often thought of burning some of them gently, just to listen to them scream. I hated the children, not for no reason, but because they hadn't ever been very nice to me.

They'd called me a freak every day until I was eight, until finally; I'd taken little Timothy and Alice into the cave near the orphanage and shown them what I could do with my hands and eyes. I could make rocks fly, I could make fire lick their skin, I could make them hit each other.

After that, no one had thrown sticks and stones at me anymore. No one had called me 'freak' to my face, though I knew they all whispered it behind my back. They were too afraid of me, because I'd asserted my power. Suddenly, the game of making my life a misery wasn't so fun anymore because they knew I'd hurt them back.

I sat on my bed, my knees drawn to my chest as I stared glumly at the wall. Asha. I didn't want her to stay angry with me forever, but I couldn't apologise to her. _She snooped through my things_. Blood flooded my face as anger rushed through me. I was tempted to punch the wall, but I restrained myself, clenching my fists I closed my eyes and thought,_ she's unimportant_.

What did it matter if Asha wasn't talking to me? It wasn't like I would be seeing her after the first of July. I'd be off to my new school, Hogwarts, and where would Asha be? Still scrubbing pots and pans at the orphanage. For all her arrogance and disdain, she was nothing. In the end she was nothing.

My thoughts were cut into when I saw a flash of bright red in the doorway. Asha walked into the boys' dorm, towards me, as if she belonged there. Her grey eyes were identical chips of ice, but around one of them there was a large purple bruise. It stood out against her pale skin as she stood before me. "Tom." Her voice was tight, she was obviously still angry, but then, so was I.

My fists clenched and unclenched and she cast a wary look at them, swearing me under her breath. Eleven year old children are not always as angelic as people think they are. Our matron swore like a sailor and us children picked it up from her at a young age. "What do you want, Asha?" My teeth were gritted, my voice hollow, empty.

She smiled at me. "I just thought you might like to know that I got one too."

I stared at her, anger melting away as confusion took over. "One what?" I asked, but her back was already turned, her unruly red hair bobbing as she walked.

"One letter, Tom," she called over her shoulder. "What else?" Then she was gone.

I cursed under my breath, maybe it wouldn't be so easy to shake Asha after all.

**Disclaimer: Anything you recognise belongs to JK Rowling.**


End file.
